Herein, related art is discussed to aid in understanding the invention. Related art labeled “prior art” is admitted prior art; related art not labeled “prior art” is not admitted prior art.
One of the classic challenges for information technology (IT) managers is to distribute software workloads among computing resources to ensure that each workload has sufficient resources to accomplish its task even during peak usage for the lowest total cost of ownership. One strategy would be to allow workloads to share a computing resource sufficient to handle the sum of the peak utilizations for the workloads. A better strategy is to take into account that workloads can have peak utilization at different times, and so allow workloads to share a computing resource sufficient to handle the peak utilization of their combined loads. The latter strategy can require more detailed knowledge of periodic changes in utilization for each workload, but allows tighter packing of the workloads.
Resource utilization by a workload can vary both periodically and non-periodically over time. In the latter case, there is often a trend for increased overall utilization, at least for successful enterprises. Resources that were once sufficient to handle installed workloads may become insufficient with increased utilization. Therefore, IT managers monitor resource utilization, acquire new resources, and redistribute workloads on an ongoing basis. An objective of the present invention is to provide for more optimal workload distributions in certain circumstances.